The Development Of High School Students’ Communicative Culturein Multi-Age Education

Abstract

The article presents the preliminary results of a study of the influence of multi-age education conditions on the development of high school students’ communicative culture. The understanding of culture as a form of being, during which a person appropriates and develops a certain system of meanings, values and norms, that is accepted in the study is justified. The concept of high school students’ communicative culture is defined. To do this, the analysis of the psychological characteristics of the age period in question was carried out and its most important marker is identified, namely the formation of a sense of maturity, social maturity. It is proposed to use the possibilities of multi-age schooling to try to solve this problem. The concepts of multi-age education, its conditions and specifics are analyzed. In the article, multi-age education of high schoolchildren is understood as the co-education of people of various chronological ages, united by the objectives of a joint educational activity. These are the children who for some reason failed to study in ordinary schools, and adults who did not receive their general secondary education. The analysis of both the essays of the students representing different age groups as well as the teachers’ long-term observation data has been conducted. The conclusion is made about the positive impact of the conditions of multi-age education on the development of high school students’ communicative culture: the value of direct communication, the willingness to communicate and communication skill development increase resulting in enhancing the motivation to study.

Keywords: Communicative culturecommunicative culture of high schoolchildrenmulti-age traininghigh schoolchild

Introduction

The change in the sociocultural environment caused by the development of information technology has affected the nature of communication in the society. The phenomenon of communicative culture, like any other sociocultural phenomenon, turned out to be subject to this influence (Simonova, Levchenkova, & Butyrina, 2019). Although the problem of high school children’s communicative culture development has repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers, it does not seem to lose its significance at the moment. Dialogue and communication remain the most important resources of education.

A change in the sociocultural environment results in the subsequent change in children and the phenomenon of childhood itself. One of the significant changes was the alteration of intergenerational interaction. In the post-figurative culture, the older generation has ceased to be the main source of information and a translator of sociocultural codes, as it used to be. This is confirmed by the results of the study of modern youths conducted by Sberbank of the Russian Federation in late 2016 (30 facts…, 2017). Young people communicate with their parents on equal terms, without showing respect, feeling their own superiority in technical skills; they also find various aspects of the older generation’s experience useless. In addition, the development of interaction in the information space has its own characteristics. The possibility of anonymous communication in this environment makes adjustments to real communication in the real world as well. The aggressiveness of communication is expanding. Communicative interaction is increasingly dominated with young people’s stereotypes that are focused on insulting, indifference towards others rather than orientation on cooperation, discussion, sympathy and respect. Communication in the information society is becoming more and more formatted; its overall aggressive background is growing. The effect of ‘social learning’ is observed by means of integrating traditional and information space. Meanwhile, the communicative culture of the personality and its manifestation at the level of communicative skills contribute to the successful socialization, the correction of basic value orientations and create a harmonious interaction of the social activity development.

Second-generation federal state educational standards, among others, outline some aspects related to the development of schoolchildren’s communicative culture. The most important behavioral elements of a person’s communicative culture are presented in the form of a set of universal communicative educational actions: the ability to listen and participate in any dialogue and polylogue, interact productively with peers and adults, the ability to communicate, demonstrate a tolerant attitude towards others and a sense of responsibility for one’s decisions and actions as well as some others. Similar ideas form the basis of the “Strategy for the development of education in the Russian Federation for the period until 2025", the concept of spiritual and moral development and education of the personality of a Russian citizen and other documents used as guidelines for education.

There are various ways of developing high school students’ communicative culture. These can be psychological areas of work, for example, trainings, role-playing games, group discussion, etc. (Kalymbetovaa, Kulsariyevab, & Massalimovaa, 2015). One of the possible ways of developing schoolchildren’s communicative culture may be studying in multi-age groups. The idea of teaching students of different ages lies at the basis of such well-known pedagogical systems as the Dalton plan, the Jena plan, the Vignette plan, Montessori pedagogy, Waldorf pedagogy, S. Frenet’s pedagogy, the project method, "open schools" or "open learning". Numerous examples of modern practice in our country and abroad may prove it. The general education systems include schools where classes are formed not by age, but by the degree of students’ preparedness. These are special schools that unite those who, for whatever reason, were unable to timely receive general secondary education. They used to be called ‘evening schools’. The concept of "high school children" is vague here - these are teenagers who must attend school by age, and adults. The specific environment of multi-age learning has been known for a long time, its positive impact on the education process has already been investigated. In this study, we focus on the relationship between the communicative culture development and the specifics of multi-age learning.

Problem Statement

The educational resource of multi-age education has several advantages compared to the traditional organization of the educational process in a modern school, which distributes students according to the principles of chronological age, subordination in the relationship between children and teachers and their hierarchy, asymmetry (Bălăită, 2017). In multi-age classes, students have to interact with older and younger people, observe different behavioral and communication patterns. It turns out that such personality traits as politeness, ethics, tactfulness, readiness for mutual concessions, which do not have much significance among teenagers of the same age, are in demand when “everyone is equal”. In a multi-age educational environment, the need for everyone to respect each subject’s interests and values is more clearly manifested, since this environment itself is characterized by saturation (a new resource appears that is absent in traditional schooling - inter-age or inter-generational interaction) and emotionality (expanding the spectrum of interactions results in the extension of the communication emotional background).

This article presents the authors' conclusions about multi-age education potential for the development of high school students’ communicative culture.

Research Questions

Purpose of the Study

Studying the specifics of multi-age education makes it possible to identify its pedagogical potential, including the one which appears in the context of the development of high school students’ communicative culture.

The article presents an attempt to identify the positive aspects of the influence of multi-age education conditions at school No. 153 of the Frunze district of St. Petersburg on the development of high school students’ communicative culture.

The results of the study can be further used to organize pedagogical work in secondary schools with multi-age classes as well as to plan multi-age interaction during extracurricular activities in ordinary comprehensive schools.

Research Methods

Findings

Conclusion

Communicative culture is one of the manifestations of general culture as а part of an individual’s being at the personality level. It provides a harmonious interaction with the society through the implementation of the dialogue of strategies "I-the Other" and "I-I".

In the modern technological world, all spheres of life have undergone changes. They have affected communication and, as a result, communicative culture too. These changes relate to the diverse facets of communicative culture. Firstly, intergenerational relationships are changing. It is difficult to say so far what prevails in this phenomenon - positive or negative points. However, the relationships that had used to be previously harmonious were disrupted and new relationship models are emerging. Secondly, communications in the information environment also change the very nature of communication, it is depersonalized and aggressiveness is growing due to anonymity. These two points are manifested in the communicative culture of high school students, creating certain problems in their socialization and the formation of their personalities.

We consider the possibility of studying in multi-age classes among the ways of solving such problems. Our study affects comprehensive schools with a diverse contingent of classes. As a rule, people who have gone through some difficult periods in their live sattend these schools. These include children of the corresponding age, having academic difficulties in ordinary schools, as well as adults that, for one reason or another, did not receive general secondary education when young. The multi-age co-education environment, we believe, can positively influence the development of high school students’ communicative culture. This may prove to be effective not only for children of the appropriate age, but adults too.

The analysis of the essays written by student’s from multi-age classes and lengthy observations conducted by school teachers revealed the beneficial effects of such education on people of different chronological ages. Young people gain a sense of security, motivation to study, the experience of communicating with adults and the opportunity to speak up without being ridiculed. They acquire self-confidence communicating with older students on equal footing. Students of older age feel their importance and success contrary to the previous background of the negative experience of the incomplete study. Communication with younger teenage students reveals their own communicative potential. A multi-age class becomes an island of harmonized intergenerational communication as communication of separate individuals.

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